Au/Ra has released the video for her recent single Ideas, which was filmed collaboratively with fans during lockdown and is available to watch now.
With a video shoot unable to happen due to current events, Au/Ra invited fans to help her create the video for Ideas, allowing them to submit footage to be part of the official video. Shot simply yet powerfully against white backdrops, the multi-performance video also features Au/Ra herself filmed in isolation. Discussing the video, she says;
“The video for ‘Ideas’ is about making the best of a situation together. I felt it was important that we give my listeners a video for the song and I thought it would be really cool to involve them and create something together. It’s made me so happy to see how enthusiastic and supportive everybody has been about it, and I would love to do something like this again!”
Ideas is an irresistible track that opens with coolly powerful vocals before building into an edgy electro pop chorus, showcasing Au/Ra’s unique expressive storytelling. Written about managing her own idealistic expectations, she says;
“Ideas is about trying to protect yourself from false expectations. I very often build up these fantasies of how I’d like things to happen – and inevitably end up being disappointed when things don’t turn out that way. So really, this song is a warning to myself, haha! I’m really looking forward to seeing and hearing how listeners interpret the song.”
Ibiza-born and Antigua-raised songwriter Au/Ra explores the challenges of being a modern-day teenager, writing music that touches on the issues today’s younger generation face on a daily basis, such as anxiety, communicating in an always online world and having to always show off your best self. Her single before Ideas was Ghost with Alan Walker, which was part of the Death Standing soundtrack and has been streamed over 20 million times on Spotify alone. Panic Room, her platinum selling hit, was remixed by Camelphat and stayed in the Top 40 for 9 weeks alongside being streamed 122 million times on Spotify.
An undercurrent of most of Au/Ra’s deeply visual and evocative lyrics is a sense of escapism, influenced by her fandom of anime and fantasy. Growing up devouring Studio Ghibli films, she’s always loved to disappear into the soft-edged, uncanny world of Miyazaki animations, and uses similar designs to flesh out the visual world of her music.
With her lovingly made outsider-pop, Au/Ra is providing a similar kind of space in her song writing: one where misfits feel at home and where the listener gets to peer for a minute through the lens of an artist who has simultaneously grown up outside the system, but who speaks with the zeitgeist of her generation.
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